How BAD is Thecus interface?

[oymd]

I would like to save some money for drives in my upcoming NAS project.

I was about to buy a Synology, but keep reading that THECUS has better bang for the buck, but very very poor USER INTERFACE?

Is it that poor?

I understand that the UI of Synology is lovely, but its not like I am going to spend hours on it?

Any Thecus users here to give some input on the interface?

I will be using the NAS (4-5 bay) with Mac computers in the house, PS3, itunes, Time Machine, etc..

Many thanks

 

[travisco_nabisco]

I haven't used their products at all, however you can try out the user interface at:
http://www.thecus.com/sp_livedemo.php

Or the Synology demo at:
http://www.synology.com/us/products/demo/index.php

 

[GregN]

I would like to save some money for drives in my upcoming NAS project.

I'm a fan of Thecus, their price performance curve is very attractive. And I have no problems with their UI.

They have some downsides:

1. The UI is klunkier than that of their competitors. The functionality is there, just not as slick. But I think you are correct, once through the initial set-up it is a set and forget.

2. The other vendors offer plug-in extensions, an app market, that Thecus does not.


If you want a high performance, set and forget NAS server Thecus is an excellent choice. But if you want your NAS to be the swiss army knife of network appliances, then the other vendors are more attractive.

As Travisco suggests, take a look at the UI Demos, and you'll see how big a difference there is, and how comfortable you are with those differences.

 

[oymd]

I haven't used their products at all, however you can try out the user interface at:
http://www.thecus.com/sp_livedemo.php

Or the Synology demo at:
http://www.synology.com/us/products/demo/index.php

I'm a fan of Thecus, their price performance curve is very attractive. And I have no problems with their UI.

They have some downsides:

1. The UI is klunkier than that of their competitors. The functionality is there, just not as slick. But I think you are correct, once through the initial set-up it is a set and forget.

2. The other vendors offer plug-in extensions, an app market, that Thecus does not.


If you want a high performance, set and forget NAS server Thecus is an excellent choice. But if you want your NAS to be the swiss army knife of network appliances, then the other vendors are more attractive.

As Travisco suggests, take a look at the UI Demos, and you'll see how big a difference there is, and how comfortable you are with those differences.

Thanks for your replies...

I checked the online demos for both....but the problem is, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO LOOK FOR...or WHAT TO COMPARE.....

Both look pretty to me....

Basically...it comes down to a simple question.....

For the uses I mentioned above:

1- Time machine regular backups to an imac, a macbook, and a windows netbook....
2- Itunes server...DLNA or whatever its called...
3- Streaming tons of cartoons to the PS3 for my 5 year old to be satisfied...
4- Regularly accessing and backing up my work files....mostly PDFs and Word, EXCEL documents...JUST LIKE WHAT I AM DOING NOW ON DROPBOX....but I am bound by the 2GB limit...
5- Cant really think of many more needs...maybe once I get the hang of it, I'll use it for other things...


For the above 4 uses, will I go : Damn....wish I had bought a Synology???

Many many thanks again for your quick replies...

 

[oymd]

I downloaded the Thecus PDF Manual, released on 17/01/2012, and had a look at the "Apple Backup Utilities" chapter on p134.

I didn't like what I read:

"Apple OS X Backup Utilities
Mac OS X does not include any backup software. However, there are a number of backup solutions available for the Mac OS X, including: iBackup, Psyncx, iMSafe,Rsyncx, Folder Synchronizer X, Tri-BACKUP, Impression, Intego Personal Backup, SilverKeeper, and Apple's dotMac Backup utility to name just a few. To find even more freeware and shareware backup utilities to choose from, go to VersionTracker or MacUpdate and search on "backup"."

What does this paragraph mean......

I read on SNB that now Thecus supports TIMEMACHINE??

 

[stevech]

As for NAS UIs...

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?p=36279#post36279

 

[Thecus - Vincent]

Hi there,

First of all, let it be clear: I work at Thecus! I'll try to be as objective as possible.

Thecus UI was not very friendly. This was one of our major issue. But we've corrected it. Now it's much easier than before: you just type which function you need and you'll arrive wherever you want. It's the most convenient way we found to allow you to browse among dozen of functions/options. And the job gets done: the NAS is stable and well protected. Most important: our UI goes straight to the point.

We'll deploy more functions during 2012 and keep tweaking our UI a bit.

Concerning add-on module, I'm happy to tell you GregN (hi Thecus fan by the way) that you're wrong We've got a built-in module system and now more than 40 certified apps exist. You can find all of them on the dedicated forum: http://forum.thecus.com/viewforum.php?f=36 I've tried myself almost of all of them, and it's a huge added value to Thecus NAS.

Concerning Time Machine (for Oymd) I can assure you it's working with all our V5 compatible NAS, I've tried it myself yesterday on a colleague's computer with a N7700. This page of the user manual refers to the fact that Acronis is not working on Mac. It's another topic You have a tutorial here http://www.thecus.com/download/howtoguide/HowtoConnectThecusNASwithMacTimeMachine.pdf (just realized we need to update for Lion, it's much easier now)

Depending on your budget, you might want to wait for our N4800 which is a 4 bay NAS with HDMI output. We're now working on embedding XBMC on it. It also features our famous built-in battery and Dual DOM for extra layers of security. It should arrive end of February. You can see me presenting it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_naGAC8hlY
As a regular NAS user, I can tell you this one is going to be huge, i'm super impatient to get one.

I think I've answered everything. I'm not supposed to be on American forums, I spend most of my time on Europeans one, so I'm not sure I'll have time to come here very often But I'll follow this subject and if anyone got any question about Thecus NAS, feel free to drop me a private message, I'll answer for sure!

EDIT: this review just came out from Legit Reviews http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1827/11/
I quote "The last Thecus NAS I reviewed was the N4100Pro back in January of 2009. Since then Thecus has come a LONG way on their NAS interface. The Thecus N5500 layout is nicely laid out and very intuitive. The configuration of the unit from first discovery to formatting the RAID was less than 15 minutes."

Vincent for Thecus

 

[oymd]

Thanks for the reply Vincent.
Interesting that u mention that you are based in Europe. I live in the UK, but there are no local forums I know of.

Can you advise as to where thecus products can be found in the UK?

I am struggling to find thecus retailers in the UK. It's mainly QNAP & SYNOLOGY?

Thanks

 

[GregN]

Hi there,

Howdy. Always nice to see a post from the manufacturer.

Thecus UI was not very friendly.

This is great news, it used to be difficult (as you can tell by this thread), to recommend Thecus because of this burden. Congrats.

Concerning add-on module, We've got a built-in module system and now more than 40 certified apps exist. You can find all of them on the dedicated forum: http://forum.thecus.com/viewforum.php?f=36

This is also good news,

Before posting the other day, I went and fetched the UI Demo link from THECUS.COM, and poked around a bit just to verify that I wasn't wrong about the Apps. I failed to find any mention of this on the home page, or on model feature pages I looked at.

The link you provide is in the forums, I would highly recommend moving this to the front page, or at least to the model feature pages for those model that support it.

Thank you for resolving the issues that had prevented me from strongly recommending Thecus to folks looking at getting a NAS. Hopefully the number of Apps will grow from 40, for those that want to add features - I still think a NAS shouldn't be a Swiss Army Knife (really, a HDMI port?!?), but a single purpose storage appliance - But I'm obviously in the minority on this.

Now if you guys added ZFS/RAID-Z support, I'd have to stop recommending DIY....

 

[Thecus - Vincent]

Hi everyone,

I'm going to reply quickly (It's vacations time here in Taiwan and I'm out of the office! )

@Oymd Concerning Thecus in UK, I strongly suggest you to check the "where to buy" on our website http://www.thecus.com/wtb.php for instance, we're present on amazon uk

@GregN NAS tends to pile up more and more functions. However, we still got NAS with less functions/CPU which are mainly focused on storage and files sharing! Those are less expensive of course.

For ZFS, the thing is the integration is super tricky, but we've still managed to work it on our NAS. Concerning RAID-Z, I think it's not planned for now. But IT industry is a fast-paced world and everything can change.

For HDMI: yes sir! We're trying to improve the multimedia part, maybe one day every home will have a Thecus NAS next to the TV

And finally for our apps: it's still relatively fresh and now we're working on embedding it on our website. Thanks for the feedback, we're on the same page.

And now, I wish you all a happy year of the dragon!

 

[s4one]

Check out the ThecusOS 5.0 UI which is a lot more user friendly!